1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a computer system, and deals more particularly with methods, systems, and computer program products for enabling message senders and event creators to convey time-sensitivity of their messages and events (such as electronic mail messages, electronic calendar entries, and “to-do” items), and for handling such messages and events at a receiver.
2. Description of the Related Art
Electronic calendars and mail systems are quite popular among computer users, both in business settings and for personal use. Electronic calendars in many cases contain a wealth of information about their owner. For example, an individual may use an electronic calendar to maintain information about his work schedule, his meetings and other appointments, his vacation and business travel plans (including when he will be away, which flights or other transportation he will use, where he can be reached while away, who he may visit while away, etc.), phone calls that need to be made at particular times, and so forth. Examples of electronic calendaring systems include Microsoft Outlook® 2000 and Lotus Organizer®, which also allows a user to create entries on his calendar for other people. For example, a secretary might have calendar entries for his own schedule, but also keep information about his manager's appointments on his own “Lotus Organizer” is a registered trademark of Lotus Development Corporation.)
These types of systems may contain a number of other advantageous features. Lotus Organizer, for example, enables a user's calendar to be modified by other people, provided those people have been designated as authorized for this activity. Making this type of modification typically comprises sending a message or event to a calendaring system or application, which identifies the target user or users and the type of information to be entered, or “calendared”, for the target user(s); the calendaring system then actually performs the modification on behalf of the message or event sender. (Hereinafter, the terms “message” and “event” are used synonymously, unless the context of usage indicates otherwise.) Use of electronic calendaring systems for purposes such as scheduling meetings of multiple persons is known in the art. For example, an invitation list may be created for a particular meeting, and a calendaring application may then use this list to check each invitee's calendar for available time periods. A meeting may then be scheduled during a time period in which all (or some majority) of the invitees have sufficient time available on their calendar.
The growing popularity of the public Internet has brought with it a huge increase in the number of people using electronic mail systems. Popular examples of electronic mail, or “e-mail”, systems include Lotus Notes® and Eudora® from QUALCOMM Incorporated. (“Lotus Notes” is a registered trademark of Lotus Development Corporation. “Eudora” is a registered trademark of QUALCOMM Incorporated.)
In these prior art messaging systems, a message creator (referred to hereinafter equivalently as a message sender) has relatively little control over how the message receiver handles the received message, including when a particular message is opened or viewed, how messages are prioritized, whether messages which require some type of follow-up action are addressed, and so forth. For example, today's e-mail systems typically allow a message sender to mark an outbound message with an “urgent” flag. However, there is very little underlying support for handling such messages upon receipt. Typically, when a message marked as urgent is received, some type of visual cue is provided to distinguish this message from other messages which have not been similarly marked. Lotus Notes, for example, provides a separate “view”—that is, a separate pane in the graphical user interface (“GUI”) window in which the user's incoming mail messages are displayed—for urgent messages. A heading of this view indicates that the user's urgent messages are displayed therein. If a user has no urgent messages in her mailbox, then this separate view is typically suppressed. Urgent messages received by a Eudora e-mail user are presented in-line within the user's incoming mail, along with normal mail messages, but are visually denoted by the presence of a red icon in a status column of the mailbox window. Eudora users may select from several different degrees of urgency when marking their outbound messages, and receiving systems which are adapted to processing these different degrees may then provide different corresponding icons. (Other receiving systems may only be adapted to handling urgency indicators as Boolean values.)
While the visual marking techniques of these prior art e-mail systems serve to visually distinguish urgent messages from non-urgent messages in the receiver's mailbox, the sender's control over the receiver's treatment of the message apparently stops there: no e-mail systems are known to the present inventors which allow the sender's actions to have other types of effects at the receiver (except for the return receipt feature which will be described). This prior art approach does nothing to ensure that the message receiver actually treats the message as urgent upon receipt. Instead, the user may—or may not—open the message with urgency. It is also up to the user whether to read the message, and whether to react—and whether to react with a sense of urgency. These prior art systems do not take into consideration that if an “urgent” message is not processed by the recipient in a timely manner, then the purpose of the e-mail message may be thwarted. For example, suppose an employee's manager sends her an urgent e-mail message at 9:00 a.m., calling a 10:00 a.m. meeting. Simply marking the outgoing message as urgent does nothing to ensure that the recipient will see it before the meeting starts (that is, within the timing that is important for this particular message). The user might be busy when the message arrives, or perhaps might have configured her e-mail system to check for new messages with relative infrequency, and therefore might not see the message in time. Or, the message might appear in the user's mailbox, but might be simply one of many similarly-flagged messages which the user may process at will. Suppose the user does not bother to read the message until 11:00 a.m. At that time, the message is unlikely to be urgent, and may in fact be completely unimportant (e.g. if the meeting has already ended).
Similarly, calendaring systems may enable someone scheduling a meeting or other event on a user's calendar to indicate that the meeting (or information about that meeting) is urgent. However, explicit action is required by the user before learning what the sense of urgency is all about. And, as discussed for prior art e-mail systems, if the user does not follow through on this action, then the sender's urgent information will not be communicated.
In some cases, a message or calendared event may convey some type of “to-do” item, where that to-do item requires the recipient to take some corresponding action. To-do items may appear in any message or event, whether marked urgent or not. For example, an e-mail message may notify the recipient that her manager needs a quarterly status report within three weeks. Because of the relatively long lead time, the message will probably not be marked as urgent. But regardless of how the message may be visually flagged in the receiver's mailbox, simply receiving the message into the mailbox does not ensure that the receiver will recognize the presence of the to-do item. And even if the to-do item is recognized, the message may subsequently become “lost” in the receiver's mail system as time passes, with the result that the receiver forgets about the item altogether.
For messages and events which require some type of follow-up, such as those containing to-do items, the sender and/or receiver must typically take action manually to track the status. Lotus Notes, for example, is configured to include a “Follow Up” folder. A message recipient may then manually move an incoming message requiring further action to that folder as a type of reminder that further attention is needed. Similarly, the sender may move his outbound copy of this same message to his own Follow Up folder to remind himself that he is awaiting some type of action or response by the recipient. Because this feature requires explicit manual actions, its effectiveness is limited.
Some e-mail and calendaring systems provide an automated “I am away” feature, whereby the e-mail or calendar user may configure her system to automatically respond to incoming messages and events with a message notifying the sender that the user is away and is therefore not receiving the sent message or event. This provides a type of limited feedback to the sender, notifying him that an urgent message will not likely be acted upon with urgency, for example. However, such “away” notification features are often misused, causing them to convey incorrect or out-of-date information. That is, the user may forget to change her settings or may simply choose not to change them. It may be difficult for some users to change their status once they have left their office as well, as they may no longer have access to the necessary systems. The more tedious it is for the user to change her configuration settings, the more likely it is that she will choose to let them become out of synchronization with her actual status. This leads to the undesirable situation where it appears to the sender that the user is available and checking her e-mail—and may therefore be expected to react quickly to urgent messages—when in fact she is not.
A number of e-mail systems also provide a “return receipt” feature, whereby a message sender may mark an outbound message with a flag to request notification from the receiver's e-mail system that the receiver has opened the mail message. While this technique conveys at least a limited amount of information to the sender, the sender still has no idea whether the receiver will act on the message. Furthermore, messages marked in this manner are typically not visually marked upon receipt in prior art systems: instead, the receiver is not informed that the message has been marked with return receipt until the message has been opened and the receiver is attempting to close it. Therefore, the receiver receives no information about the sender's requested treatment of the message until she happens to open it and prepares to close it.
U.S. Pat. No. 5,428,784, which is entitled “Method and Apparatus for Linking Electronic Mail and an Electronic Calendar to Provide a Dynamic Response to an Electronic Mail Message” discloses a technique for automatically responding to a received e-mail message using information stored in the addressee's electronic calendar. When an e-mail message is received, its receipt time is compared to the addressee's electronic calendar to see if any events are currently scheduled. If so, various types of information regarding the scheduled event (such as the start and stop time and what the event comprises) may be returned as a response to the e-mail sender so that the sender can determine whether the addressee is likely to be viewing his e-mail at the present time. If the user's calendar indicates that he is currently in a meeting or on vacation, for example, it is unlikely that the sender's mail will be read promptly. If the sender needs an immediate response to an urgent e-mail message, the sender can evaluate the automated response to decide whether to try some other source of information. However, as with manually configured “away” notifications, the response may be misleading if the calendar does not contain accurate information about the recipient's schedule.
Accordingly, improved techniques are needed which avoid the limitations of prior art systems.